In going through the various examples of technology in the classroom, I found Cases 3 & 6 to be good examples of some ways students can use technology.\u00a0 Case 3 demonstrated how technology can be used to facilitate problem-based learning activities, helping to minimize, as Teacher A notes, the amount of traditional, transmissive teaching needing to be done.\u00a0 In doing so, it allows students to construct their own knowledge particularly as the activity shown in the example was a problem-based one that challenged students to not only identify and verify scientific concepts, but to also devise their own testing method using the equipment available.\u00a0 In addition, it allowed students to develop skills in many areas from scientific (usage of computers and lab equipment), social (collaborative learning environment), and analytic (troubleshooting equipment set ups and reviewing of data).<\/p>\n
From this though, two questions did arise, one of which was address in the interview with Teacher C in case 6. In Case 6, technology is used as a way to facilitate more avenues of creativity by leveraging all the ways that computers and tablets can take various inputs (voice or picture\/video) and synthesize various outputs (podcasts, slideshows\/powerpoints, edited video).\u00a0 The issue that Teacher C discusses is that of time and professional development as when he was asked how he learned how to use all the various programs, he lamented that much of it was done on his own with some provided by the district.\u00a0 While teachers are granted regular prep blocks, it seems that there is more needed (and unbroken sessions of time) for the planning and implementation of these programs.\u00a0 It is and always will be an issue but discussions about the realistic and pragmatic time needed and provided to teachers to work with these technologies will always be necessary.<\/p>\n
The other question that Case 3 touched on was that of whether technology’s ability to remove more menial components of tasks is a detriment to skill development.\u00a0 Teacher A mentions that measuring lengths and angles and using other tools are certainly skills in their own right, but also rightly points out that technology proves more time efficient by removing the more mundane tasks so that students can quickly get to the concepts at hand.\u00a0 Developing fundamental skills may or may not necessary to accomplish a certain task (ie- one does not need to know how to develop film in a dark room to take a photo), but it does help to provide a depth of understanding.\u00a0 Perhaps one of the approaches to this issue is to have a department discussion on how to develop these skills in earlier grades and transition towards more complex technology use in the higher grades.<\/p>\n
I feel that these considerations are useful when thinking about how to integrate technology with any past activities or methods that teachers felt comfortable with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In going through the various examples of technology in the classroom, I found Cases 3 & 6 to be good examples of some ways students can use technology.\u00a0 Case 3 demonstrated how technology can be used to facilitate problem-based learning activities, helping to minimize, as Teacher A notes, the amount of traditional, transmissive teaching needing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42702,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1669386],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-video-cases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42702"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1057"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1081,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057\/revisions\/1081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}